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Nightmare Alley (1946)

by William Lindsay Gresham(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1590173481 (ISBN13: 9781590173480)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

NYRB Classics

review 1: This book is about the Big Top. If your tastes in reading tend to be about going to the circus, watching the clowns and elephants, eating cotton-candy and popcorn, then this is not the book for you. If your memory of county fairs and carnivals is riding the Ferris Wheel and the Merry-go-Round, then this book is not for you. This is a hard-bitten story of a carny with certain talents. He rises from a roustabout to running a mind-reading racket. He, Stan, ventures out on the merits of his skills at fooling the marks. He sees his destiny through the Tarot deck. He wants the address on Easy Street where life is cool and the dames are there for your pleasure. He knows what he wants and will stop at nothing to get it. The main characters are clearly defined and elicit p... moreowerful emotions from a reader...at least this reader. Stan's backstory is layered and hard to read about, but it clearly defines who he is and how he sees life. The liner notes state that the book was banned upon publication. One can see why, given the mind-set of 1946 middle America. Little is known about the author, but after reading this book and the sketchy details of his life, it is truly sad to learn that he took his own life in NYC in 1962. Sad, but understandable.
review 2: Just the way I likes em: a rags-to-riches-to-rags yarn, in the spirit of Goodfellas, but with almost no joy or happiness or decency at all-- as in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, the moral spectrum here ranges from the extremely evil to the moderately evil. Thoroughly sick and weird, but also weirdly sad: it is not hard to read Gresham's life in that of his complicated main character. A dark tale (not a parable, by any means) with a distinctly American flavor (featuring such classic American tropes as carnies, alcoholism, haunted houses, corporate magnates, psychiatric offices, trains, and dogs). less

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